Glitter. Real Stories About Sexual Desire From Real Women (7 page)

You Brought This on Yourself

Sandra D

I am an artist/craftsman/maker of beautiful things (just not babies). I am forty years old and I am still just a girl. I am a wife. I am an introvert. I am a rape survivor. I am infertile. I ‘came of age’ in the late ‘80s to early ‘90s, making my way from goth to grunge to granola in the process.

As a (virgin) teenager, I was a Good Girl. Honor Roll, part-time job, piano lessons and all. I had the usual crushes, stolen kisses and a couple of very respectful boyfriends, but I fantasized about being dominated. Like many Good Girls, I have always had thing for Bad Boys. In my younger days, I was persistently attracted to boys (and later, men) who frightened me, who were...a little rough. Any heavy petting I indulged in inevitably left me with bruises and I was proud of them, navel-gazing goth girl that I was. Those bruises proved there was blood in my veins, they made me feel edgy. They made me feel alive.

I was nineteen when I finally fell for a (married) man who was able to assuage just enough of my fear to convince me to give up my virginity. He maintained the upper hand by gently leading me down one kinky path after another, always keeping at the very edge of my comfort zone until he could tell me to do just about anything...and I would. He ended his marriage to be with me, though time would tell he could never actually be faithful to me. There were simply too many other women and men in the world to tempt his tastes. For all that, I somehow felt safe with him even though he made me uncomfortable. I got off on being just a little bit afraid. Like those early bruises, my discomfort made me feel edgy and alive, right up until I learned what ‘against my will’ really meant: the day I just didn't feel like having sex and he DID. Just because I lived with him and shared my bed with him did not mean I had forfeited my right to say no and it certainly did not give him the right to pin me to the floor and force me. That day was the beginning of the end for that relationship. I eventually realized that I spent most of my time in bed with him just waiting for it be over and the rest of the time dreading his touch, but it took me another year and a half to break away completely.

When I was twenty-one and before I had completed my breakaway, I went backpacking in Europe as do all good, middle-class college kids looking to broaden their horizons. After a night of too much drinking and bar hopping with people I didn't really know in a strange country, I fell prey again to that slightly frightened attraction. Unfortunately, this man was nothing like I had ever met before. When I said no, he simply beat me into unconsciousness and did what he wanted regardless. When I came to a few hours later, he was passed out. I grabbed my clothes, got back to my hotel to pack my bags and got myself out of town in a matter of hours. That was one set of bruises that brought me no pleasure or pride. Two towns later, I got myself to an English-speaking doctor who gave me a prescription for an antibiotic and a heaping serving of "You brought this on yourself, young lady" with nary a mention of counseling of any kind. Looking back, I do consider myself lucky. My attacker (I wonder, was he "mine"? Must I claim him? Surely I was not the only one to suffer at his hands?) only gave me herpes. He could have given me HIV/AIDS, he could have gotten me pregnant, he could have outright killed me. Lucky though I may have been, every time I have an outbreak, I relive that night in my head. And how very lucky, lucky, lucky that the Good Girl in me felt compelled to be upfront about the basics with every sexual partner that came after. Talk about a dampener.

Another year rolled by before I met the man who is now my husband. He was without a doubt a Bad Boy, from ponytail to police record and so on. Yet, here was another man that proved to be nothing like I had ever met before. This time, that meant that he was solely focused on my pleasure and my enjoyment. He never pushed me out of my comfort zone. Instead he made me feel not only safe, but cherished, and eighteen years later he still does. He IS my comfort zone. Sex in our marriage is not about who has the upper hand, pushing boundaries, asserting control or proving that I am alive. Sex is now a source of comfort in times of stress, it is soothing and relaxing. It is full of fun and often, laughter. It is intimate without any hint of violation and it is everything I need it to be.

Broken

Kate Anon

I am a thirty-one-year-old late bloomer. While I think I spent my teen years completely preoccupied by sex, it was not until I was almost nineteen that I finally acted on my desires. I can be found at @KateAnon and
KateAnon.com.

In my early twenties, I struggled as a young woman married to a man with a very low libido. I was disappointed by married sex. I questioned if I was a sex addict, or had an unhealthy relationship with the act.

It was only after a few months of trying to conceive that I realized just how much of a proble
m
h
e
had. When you first decide to head down this road, you anticipate having intercourse all the time, to up your odds. When a man has his heart set on being a dad but doesn't want to do the act necessary to get things started, you worry. Hurdle one.

After visiting a urologist, we realized he made almost no testosterone. Which meant he produced almost no sperm. Hurdle two, which took years to properly discover. So, at twenty-five and thirty-nine, we became infertility patients. Shots and blood work for both of us. Restrictions on our sex life so we would be best able to move forward with IVF.

We could no longer have sex for pleasure. It seemed all about creation. It wasn't pleasurable, anyway. Sex was now a reminder that we were broken. It reminded me of miscarriages and failed cycles and gained weight. It reminded him of low desire and lower hormone levels. It made us both feel like failures.

Our first IVF cycle, I hyperstimulated and wound up in the emergency room. Our next, the sample had no sperm; testosterone replacement is a delicate game and that round, we lost.
 We did finally go through cycles that seemed successful, until the time came to do the pregnancy tests. We were never able to conceive this way, because after starting a new regimen of drugs, an ultrasound showed an abnormal growth in my uterus. Hurdle three, and this one was the kicker: cancer.

My marriage was crumbling under the weight. We had been married for four years at this point, and before all this, I would have told you that we were a strong couple. I guess we just weren't strong enough.

I had always struggled with my sexual identity. I don't think I was very promiscuous, but my husband had only one partner before me, and I worried he did think that of me. I had always wanted more, kinkier, different. He preferred a regular schedule of missionary, not too often. I thought he'd come around, he just hadn't had enough experience to become experimental.

Boy, was I wrong. As we headed down the road of infertility treatments and disappointment, the sex happened less and less frequently. From about six months into trying to have a child, we were seeing doctors, so the only thing that would have resulted in a baby was insemination or IVF. With that fact in mind, my husband began to decline the invitation more and more.

Even my masturbatory habits became an issue. I'd have to hide it from him, and he'd shame me for wanting it. When we did try to have sex, things didn't work as they should, and he'd shut down from embarrassment. I would then resent him for not trying to please me, or not working harder to find a solution. No amount of Viagra can help when it's hormonal and psychological.

After almost two years of little to no sexual contact from my husband, I met a man. I did not want to be the clichéd adulteress, but I found myself quickly going down that road. No one had touched me, really touched me, in so long. I hadn't felt wanted in years. Here was someone who wanted me, who desired me, who wanted me to feel pleasure. I was not strong enough to resist, and with many justifications, I didn't want to.

As I started chemo, and wondered how much life I had left, I determined I wouldn't spend it frustrated and pining for what could have been. I carried on relationships for months with a couple of men. Men who were also in marriages like mine, which made me feel safer, made me feel better.

I don't make excuses for what I did. I know I was wrong. However, I won't continue to condemn myself for it. I truly believe it's one of the reasons I survived a time in my life that was pretty unbearable. As I finished cancer treatment and closed the door on having children, my husband knew I was unhappy and wanted a divorce. He attempted to initiate sex, the first time in more than three years, because he thought that would fix it. As if one act, after years of sexual neglect, could solve the problem. That's when I knew it was time to leave. That's when I knew that sex was important to me, important enough to make me stand up and say, “I deserve better.”

I deserve love, passion and a good sex life. I think things may have been accelerated by our medical issues. Without them, it may have taken years for me to realize that we were completely incompatible sexually. I resolved to never make that mistake in a relationship again.

I’m a Jane

Jane Johnson

Jane is a stay at home mom. She used to teach middle school math a long time ago but has since forgotten the quadratic equation after hearing “Elmo's Song” one too many times.

Society dictates that no ‘good’ girl would want to fuck a John. When I found out that my boyfriend’s sexual past included call girls, I wasn’t shocked, I was curious. I’ve never seen prostitution or any other kind of sex work as an inherently bad thing in and of itself. In college and grad school, I was often regretful that a fat girl would never get work as an exotic dancer. Had I known then that there was a market for my body type, I would’ve been turning tricks in hotels instead of checking guests into them.

Maybe I’d see
n
Best Little Whorehouse in Texa
s
a few too many times, but I’ve always been troubled by narrative of the exploited prostitute as the definitive, or only, narrative. It is paternalistic to think that every woman involved in prostitution is a passive victim. It is patronizing to assume that no one would ever choose to be a prostitute, or that it could be a career that didn’t involve exploitation.

I’m not completely naïve. I know that sex work has a lot of potential for abuse. In part, this can be caused by exploitation of the women involved. However, the police are also accountable in part-while both prostitution and solicitation are illegal, prostitutes are more frequently targeted in sting operations. Rape, theft and abuse go unreported. The public gleefully slut shames a sex worker. In articles about ‘prostitution rings’, the women are named, but not their patrons. A former sex worker could go on to win a Nobel Prize and every article about her would refer to her as a ‘former prostitute.’ For some, it is a career that will define – or end – their lives. For some, it will be a terrible experience. But not for all.

Once I knew I was in the bed of a John, I wanted to know about his experiences. I wanted to know if I was right that prostitution could be just another legitimate career choice. Perhaps I’d merely been brainwashed by one too many viewings/readings of a story involving the “hooker with a heart of gold” trope? From him, I learned about the world of independent call girls. Women who utilized their body as their business, controlled the pricing of their services, and chose which clients to see. Women who required a referral from another sex worker before they would see a client. Women who were not exploited. I couldn’t be sure, though, how much of what he told me was narrative from the girls versus reality.

When I began writing a sex blog, I quickly plugged into that community. I developed friendships with a number of people working in the sex industry: phone sex workers, prostitutes (male and female), Johns, erotica authors, dancers and more. From any number of them, I began to piece together another narrative, one that straddled the middle ground, where sex workers could be independent and could do the work because they loved it, but one where they still occasionally took clients they didn’t necessarily enjoy. I learned about what it was like to hide your work from your family (or not to), what sex worker activism looks like and why it is necessary. For many, it was like any other job, one that had its wonderful moments and its horrible moments, only without health insurance or predictable income.

Later that year I told my partner that I missed having sex with other women. I was very aroused by the idea of having sex with him and another woman. As it was also arousing to him, we began to discuss if it was a realistic fantasy to explore, and how best to do it.

The idea of hiring a professional was floated. Enjoyable sex without the stress and hassle of a relationship sounded appealing. Between my partner and my online community, I had the tools I needed to take the steps to find and hire a call girl.

I have patronized two women as a client, and hired a third on behalf of my husband while he was on a business trip. Much as I look for certain qualities in a pediatrician, I look for certain things in a call girl. I look for women who run their own websites. Who write copy that I find appealing. Who respond to emails professionally and within a reasonable amount of time.

It is a trope that men are visual and women want an emotional connection. It is also one that accurately describes me. When I am talking with a call girl, I don’t want to waste her time (as it is as valuable as mine), but I do want to see if we can connect. Do I like her sense of humor? Do we share a common interest? No, I don’t need (or deserve) to know her life story, her hopes and dreams, or the name on her driver’s license. But I do want to have an experience that is enjoyable for all involved.

Plenty of Johns want to get right to the action, if their reviews of independent call girls are to be believed (and I do take them with a grain of salt). I tend to book an amount of time that allows for us to talk first. To warm up to one another before clothes are removed. For me, it’s important to find a connection that makes me comfortable having a sexual experience with another person. Which is why I’ve never done well in a bar/club scenario: too loud to even be sure of someone’s name, much less what book they last read.

Yes, part of the experience is awkward. It is strange to go to a hotel room, or a stranger’s apartment knowing that you’re going to have sex. It is awkward to hand over the money, which is why I’m glad it happens first. The first few moments (unless we are a repeat customer) are very much an awkward first date.

It has been my luck to meet intelligent, funny and sensual women who excel at dispelling that awkwardness. I’ve been lucky enough to patronize women who are happy to share and give tips on things like giving a spanking, or to instruct me in a new skill. These women have enriched my sex life, which is the exact opposite of what opponents of sex work would have me believe. I am a better lover and my marriage is stronger for these experiences.

While I am lucky to have had these experiences, I don’t share them in such frank terms. I have technically broken the law. While I feel as though I can safely call for things like the decriminalization of prostitution, I do not feel as though I can openly call for them as a Jane. I think that if I came out as a Jane, my opinions on the topic would be dismissed, because (in part) I would no longer be calling for them as a (perceived) upstanding citizen/morally upright woman.

We don’t seem to be capable of having an honest discussion about prostitution in the US. A veil of silence surrounds prostitution. Once the veil is lifted, the moralizing begins. We color interaction with a prostitute as a moral failing: that it somehow proves an immoral character. We paint prostitutes as everything from fallen women to victims, without ever painting them as feminists or as empowered. Society expected me to shame my partner for his past.

The narrative about prostitution is broken. Until we can admit the full spectrum of experiences as a prostitute, and as a John/Jane, we’re not going to have an honest discussion about it, or be able to address any of the flaws or abuses. But if I’m being honest, I have too much lose to be the person to try to fix it publicly. I own that my silence is part of the problem, but that it is the right choice for me at this time.